Job 1:1-12 & 2:1-13
4 October 2009
World Communion Sunday
“Communion with Job”
Let me tell you something that happened one day when I was in high school. We were sitting in class, and the discussion somehow turned to the Bible. (I really don’t remember what class it was.) One of my classmates voiced his problems with believing it. Referring to Genesis, he demonstrated God gathering some dirt, and—presto!—a human being. (To be honest, even then I had my doubts that it happened quite that way.)
Then he mentioned the book we’ll be looking at this month. “God tortured Job!” he said. Even though I hadn’t been to church in years, I felt the need to open my mouth and say something. My very enlightening response was, “It was a test.” That’s all I had. Of course, that only seemed to confirm what he had just said.
During all of this, our teacher was looking a bit nervous. I don’t suppose it had anything to do with his theological viewpoint. I imagine he was visualizing a conversation with the principal of our public high school as to how our class turned into a Bible study!
The book of Job, admittedly, is a challenge. It’s mainly a series of poems, with Job, his friends, Elihu, a young man who seems to appear out of nowhere, and the Lord taking turns at speaking. The long section of poetry is bracketed, front and back, by passages of prose. This prologue and epilogue has been recognized as a sort of folk tale about a saintly man who loses, in sequence, his wealth, his children, and then his health. This ancient story sets the stage for the book of Job as we have it.
Why do bad things happen to good people? We’ve all asked or heard that question. The unfairness of life inevitably occurs to every human being at some point, usually when we’re still quite young. I say it’s inevitable; it can’t help but happen, because we’re created in the image of God. Some of what that means is that we have an innate, an inborn, sense of right and wrong. We have a sense of justice. How that gets developed is an entirely different conversation.
Why do bad things happen to good people? And Job definitely fits into the category of “good people.” The book immediately begins with that premise. Besides being extremely wealthy (indeed, the richest man in all the East), Job is described as a good man—more than that, as a righteous man, one who reveres and loves God.
It seems that something more fundamental is going on than the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The book challenges a key notion of how God deals with the human race. It calls into question something that the orthodox faith of the day held about divine reward and punishment, which was: the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer. Period. Case closed.
There are plenty of scriptures that say that very thing. Here’s just one example, from Psalm 32: “Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord” (v. 10).
Don’t we all believe something like that? You will reap what you sow. What comes around goes around. That’s what Job’s friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—keep telling him. (By the way, I saw a recent news report about an archaeological discovery. A tablet was unearthed with an engraving of Zophar’s last name: apparently, it was Zogood.)
Our tendency is to feel that people ought to get just what they deserve. That does seem to be the way of justice. People should be praised or punished, based on what they’ve done. That’s only fair.
Our scripture reading speaks to that. I want us to notice something in the conversation between God and Satan. In chapter 2, the Lord says that Job “still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason” (v. 3). For no reason.
So much for the theory that Job deserves the loss of his wealth! So much for the claim that some sin explains the death of his children! Already embedded in the story that centuries later would become the book of Job is the declaration that all the horrible stuff that’s happened to him simply isn’t his fault.
It can be hard to remember that sometimes…stuff happens. Pain, disease—something suddenly going wrong with the car—can leave us feeling like all the forces of the cosmos are arrayed against us. It’s not that God is ticked off at us; it’s that we live in a world with a lot of complicated things going on. The more complicated a system is, the more there is to it that can go wrong.
There’s something we should note about the character called “Satan.” Actually, in the book of Job, this creature is known in Hebrew as @f;c;h' (ha-satan), “the satan,” which means “the accuser,” “the adversary.” At this point in time, “Satan” is not yet considered to be a name; it’s just a title. His job is to test human faithfulness. To the early Hebrews, he fits a necessary role. “The satan” isn’t really seen as evil. After all, God approves his plans, which might seem to bring us back to my high school classmate.
This “satan” says something we should notice. In chapter 1, Job loses his wealth and his children. Still, verse 22 tells us, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.” Now, in chapter 2, here’s what the Accuser says: “All that people have they will give to save their lives” (v. 4). And he follows that with the idea of attacking Job’s health.
“All that people have they will give to save their lives.” Is that true? In the story, Satan refers to Job’s wealth—and even to his children. It’s an unflattering picture he paints of Job, and for that matter, of everyone. What would we give to save our lives, to save our skins? What is our price? How about our integrity? It’s hard to say what we would do until we’ve walked in Job’s shoes.
The fact that this scripture reading falls on World Communion Sunday adds another dimension. At first glance, this may seem like a strange text for a day like this. But entering into Christian communion means sharing both pain and joy. In the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, we take the broken body and shed blood of Christ into ourselves. That’s part of what the apostle Paul means when he speaks of “discerning the body” (1 Co 11:29). If we’re attentive—if we’re discerning—it changes us.
We see in the suffering of Job (and Mrs. Job) the suffering of the world. It’s not a pleasant thing to identify with our suffering brothers and sisters in other countries. It’s not pleasant to identify with our suffering brothers and sisters right here. But the love of Christ continues to compel us.
There’s a very interesting book by Richard Rohr, Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections.[1] Rohr is a Franciscan priest who lives in New Mexico. For Fr. Rohr, the book of Job is about more than a good man suffering evil. It’s a story of conversion. Job is the one who has everything stripped away, journeys through the storm, and finds God in a new way. I won’t go into detail about that right now; I’ll save that for when we look at chapter 42!
I mention the idea of conversion, though, because we need to hear it. While we journey through this vale of tears, suffering is never far away. We may think we’ve banished it to some distant land, but the darn thing always seems to have a round-trip ticket! Still, I also recognize that not everyone gets an equal dose of suffering.
That’s understood very well by three guys in our story: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They hear of the horrendous things that have happened to Job, and wanting to comfort him, they set out together to go and see him. That right there says something. They choose to literally put themselves out and go to their suffering friend.
The scripture says, “When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him” (v. 12). I, like others, have had the disconcerting experience of seeing those who’d been, so to speak, through the meat grinder—and at first, not recognizing them. That stuff makes this story more real.
Job’s friends go through the ritual of mourning, of grief. They weep; they tear their robes; they throw dust in the air, and they sit down on the ground with Job. No one says anything. According to the text, this goes on for “seven days and seven nights,” a poetic way of describing the long time that they maintain a silent presence with him.
Remember my “Zophar Zogood” attempt at a joke? Well, let me say that for Job’s friends, it is “so far, so good”: at least, regarding their behavior. They’re doing a very difficult thing. They’re actually being there with their friend in the midst of his pain. Anyone who’s simply been with a suffering friend or family member knows that it isn’t fun. It requires a sacrifice of self. It isn’t until they open their mouths and start giving unwanted advice that Job’s friends earn the description “miserable comforters” (16:2).
We’ll take a look at what Eliphaz and the others say next week. But I think it’s safe to say that Job’s friends, in their clumsy, boneheaded way, are part of his journey of conversion. Hearing them go on and on seems to help Job realize that he’s now grown beyond the level of faith and understanding at which they’re stuck. You might say that he’s been forced to do it!
Maybe some of us can relate to Job. Maybe you find yourself in unfamiliar terrain, in which the supports of the past have failed. Old certainties have turned out to be illusions. (By the way, that’s not an entirely bad thing!) Life has led you down paths that you never would have chosen. I want to finish with some words from Richard Rohr that speak to that lonely feeling when it seems that the whole world has tossed you out like the trash.
“When you are feeling abandoned, pick up Job’s book and speak Job’s prayers and know they have been prayed before and that we are part of a great history and we are all in this together. There are no feelings we feel that others have not felt before. At such times, in our prayer, we unite ourselves in solidarity with others who suffer and who have suffered before us.
“Often, that’s the only way out of self-pity and a preoccupation with our own feelings. We have to choose solidarity and the ‘communion of the saints.’ There, we realize we are carrying the weight of our brothers and sisters, and they are carrying ours.”[2]